Monday, April 21, 2008

Holiday weekends can be exhausting, what with all the family obligations and such. Travelling from house to house cuz the older members of your family want nothing to do with each other, but really want to see your kids... Soooooooo you do what you need to do. And honestly, I don't mind. But this past weekend was a holiday weekend built explicity for ME.

Saturday = Record Store Day

and

Sunday = 420

What a weekend for Daddy. Anyway, where to begin?

Saturday I packed up the girls with the full intention of hitting some record stores in honor of record store day and then seeing Grimy Styles at Reggae Fest and then seeing Prince Paul at Richard Henry's birthday party. Part of that worked out.

We started the day at Backspin Records, Austin's second newest record emporium (newest being Spot's Trailer Records). Backspin is kicking some major ass. Sadly we went pretty early and missed the free beer and Superstar DJ crew. But whatever.

Eva and Elena had a great time.

Lena found that Fox and the Hound Picture Disc she's been digging for for AGES!

Then we headed off to my old place of employment, Music Mania, where we were once again too early cuz DJ Grip and Young Spinna and Lil A had a whole event planeed there for later that day.

Elena loved the cookies, seen here admiring the owner of the store...

Bernard!

Here's DJ Grip, I caught him as he was loading in. He told Eva she had to be in the pic so he could "Get on the blogspot." I think someone should GIVE me and Grip a radio show. Cuz we are both underground soldiers.

As is Young Spinna who had on the truest shirt of the day. I need a 2x asap my lil bro.

Then we went and met up with Sun Jue and her son Ziggy and headed towards Zilker Park/Auditorium Shores for Reggaefest. Why Austin has no real parking lots in that area is beyond me. The Manhattan of the South (which is what I call Austin) needs to work a little harder and faster to contain all these people. This is Texas, parking everywhere else in this state is mad plentiful yo.

Anyway, we were headed to Reggaefest but we stopped off at this fountain so the kids could play. Grimy Styles was going on at 4:30 p.m. so we headed over there at about 4:20 ish (uh huh) and heard them starting up as we walked across the street. We got to the gate and the line was LITERALLY 6,000 people deep. I am not kidding. With three small children and the only band I wanted to see already on stage, we decided to say forget it and go to Waterloo.

With a quick stop into Whole Foods cuz the man Davey D was having lunch so we swang thru and said hello.

At Waterloo I had to wrestle past the legions of Panic at the Disco fans who were there for the autograph session (they were 30 mins late) and I thought back to the day when my dad took me to Texas Tapes and Records (age 10) for a Twisted Sister/Ratt autograph session and well, I pondered the similarites and realized that there were many, only the line at Texas Tapes and Records was more manly and rough and tumble, even if it was mostly 10 year olds, like this one was as well.

Anyway I bought this:

And it's made me laugh more in the past 24 hours than just about anything in the past year. John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats on BLACK SABBATH'S MASTER OF REALITY! If any record deserves a book written about it, it's this.

John Darnielle is one of the greatest American songwriters of our generation and his brain and soul should be regarded as national treasures. That's all I'm gonna say. Go get the book. Oh yeah, one more thing...

I didn't post a track list for the podcast cuz I personally feel as though the beauty of radio is that you don't know what is coming next (for the most part). So I didn't. But I screwed up so much in the studio, that I didn't announce that I played "Heretic Pride," the title track from the Mountain Goats latest opus, and well, whatever, here it is.

Then later that night Melissa and I went to Mohawk for Richard Henry's birthday party, with Crew 54 and Prince Paul. DJ P Nyce from Baltimore was spinning for most of the time we were there and he really only played east and wets coast hits from 1993-1995 so we pretty much bounced after a couple beers. No offense, but I just wasn't needing a hip hop history lesson on that particular night.

Then Sunday night I headed back out to Mohawk to check out Collie Budz, Grimy Styles, Zeale 32 and Phranchyze. Show was pretty much off the chain. Zeale and Phranchyze have some serious energy and lyrics for days.

My boy Krisna worked the beats.

Richard Henry was still celebrating his birthday.

Gary Clark Jr. and Friends. Dude is amazing as well. I need to get more on this site up on him man cuz he's a serious shining star in this Austin city town.

Noam Sayin'?

Anyway the crowd was pretty thick and of course, Grimy Styles killed it! (Word to Deborah Sengupta Stith and the Austin American Statesman for putting Matt from Grimy Styles on the front page Sunday!)

Anyway, they killed it.

Matt

Martin

Chris

And I never get any good shots of Jacob, aka Dr. Dubbist, but um, I think I did here.

Collie Budz hit the stage, and honestly, I haven't been listening to much dancehall in the past few years. Not a huge fan, I lean more towards dub and roots, but his show was really good. He has a strong voice and real energy. I was a lil surprised.

Anyway, I cut out like 1:30 a.m. and headed home after taking a leak and this photo. Many messages are contained in this photo...

WHAT A WEEKEND! But for me, this coming weekend promises to be even better. See, I am a lil obsessed with this Dutch drummer named Han Bennink so I'm gonna check him out on Saturday in Austin at the Victory Grill and on Sunday in Houston at Diverseworks with Peter Brotzmann. Two improvisers who wreck fucking shop real talk noam talm bout?

Anyway, I wrote about Han on HoustonSoReal before and posted some pics I took of the Instant Composers Pool when they played Diverseworks a couple years back. I'll have a full report and photos next week. For now check out some of this YouTube footage and get familiar with what you just might see should you heed my advice and come out to one or both of the shows.